Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Thanks for Coming and Try the Demonization--Lefty's Unintentional Comedy Riff in Hamilton Spec

"Anti-war" activist Ken Stone writes that P.M. Harper has it all wrong. Israel and the U.S. are the biggest threats to security in today's world. And Iran? Why, Iran's a "peaceful" pussycat that's being unfairly "demonized":

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Prime Minister Stephen Harper characterized “Islamicism” as the main security threat to Canada. Last week, he labelled Iran “as the world’s most serious threat to international peace and security.”

In the first instance, Harper deliberately contributed to Islamophobia, the fear of Muslims and of Islam, which is the intellectual underpinning of the continuing U.S. “war on terror.” Only a few weeks after Harper’s September remarks, there was a deliberate targeting by racists of Hamilton’s Downtown Mosque. Coincidence? I think not.
Now labelling Iran as the main threat to world peace, Harper is seeking to prepare Canadians for a role in a possible U.S., NATO, or Israeli attack on Iran. His government recently placed the frigate HMCS Charlottetown on station in the region.

However, nothing Harper said about Iran is true. I visited Iran in October for an international conference on Palestine, as a guest of the Iranian government. Iran lives in peace with its neighbours and, unlike the U.S., hasn’t attacked any country in over 200 years. It is developing nuclear energy to produce electricity because its oil reserves will run out in 20 years. Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) and is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

On the other hand, Israel, India, and Pakistan have not signed the NNPT nor joined the IAEA. All three have nuclear weapons and have gone to war with their neighbours repeatedly. Why Harper’s double standard, then, on Iran?...

Yeah, Harper, whassup with that? Just because Iran's kooky Khomeinists want to nuke the Jews so as to hasten the return of their long-"occluded" messiah, the legendary twelfth imam, why demonize them and not, you know, the wicked Zionists? (Ken reminds me of those clueless folks--rightly pegged as useful idiots by Vlad Lenin--who used to visit Soviet Russia back in the day, and returned with glowing accounts of how they'd seen the Communist future, and that it worked.)